It was a warm and starry night. It should have been dark and stormy, or black and windy, or maybe even grey and a little chilly, but much like mothers the weather does not always do what you want it to. But even if it wasn't as grand as they would have liked it was still a good night for telling stories, and that's exactly what the two friends sitting together under a purple moon were doing.
They were a boy and a girl, or at least they looked like a boy and a girl if you chose to assume those sorts of things about people. They sat under a big old tree sharing a blanket they didn't need and hot chocolate they absolutely did, telling every story they could think of and a few more after. The boy, small and a little round with hair blacker than the night ever dreamed of, had done most of the talking so far. He spun stories of animals that talked and people that didn't, far away lands and magic spells, the ordinary and wonderful all tied up together at once. He was good at this, at talking and telling. He could make you laugh, could make you cry, could make you dream of things you'd never seen just because he said so.
The girl had been doing lots of listening, which was what she was good at. She always listened, to everyone and everything, and so when it was finally her turn to stop listening and start speaking her stories were more real than anything. When she started talking and her hands started dancing and her eyes came alive it was like you were there, all because she heard the truth in what other people hid in what they said.
But there was something else going on tonight, on this warm and lovely night under the stars. The girl’s bright eyes were alive with something that wasn’t usually there, and her quietness was even deeper than was normal for her. She had listened to her friend’s stories of flying and falling and darkness and brightness, taking it all in and not saying a word back. She let him talk and talk and talk, until he was all talked out and the words died away into the happy silence of two people who know each other so well that silence can be lovely. But as the silence went on it turned into waiting, and when her eyes finally went up to meet the circling stars she began to speak.
“There’s a man out there somewhere who can travel in time and space, and his name is the Doctor.”
to be continued